People have engaged in various forms of arm wrestling for centuries. A classic form of arm wrestling involves two people seated across a short table with their elbows disposed upon the table directly across from one another and having hands grasping the other person's hand and with the arms disposed upwardly towards the hands in a vertical direction. Once the contest begins, the first person to push the other person's hand backwardly onto the table is declared the winner.
One of the problems with this classic form of arm wrestling is that sometimes the losers arm is bent downwardly in a direction in which it is not intended to bend, thereby causing injury and sometimes even broken arm bones to the loser. Another problem associated with classic arm wrestling is that one person may have a physical advantage over the other because of the length of the arm from the elbow to the hand. The person with such an arm longer than his opponent will have an advantage because such person with the longer arm will have more leverage and will be pushing down from above. Similarly, the person who is longer from the waist up to the shoulders than his opponent will have an advantage over his opponent because he will be able to exert a force from the shoulders above his opponent and more easily push such opponent's hand downwardly.
Two of the basic rules for classic arm wrestling are that each contestant must keep his elbow on the table during the contest and he must remain seated during the contest. The reasons for these rules are because that a person whose elbow is lifted off of the table can push downwardly and have more leverage against his opponent who has his elbow on the table. Similarly, a person who stands up to some extent, thereby lifting his shoulders higher, also gains an unfair advantage because he then can push downwardly against his opponent whereas the contest is designed to be one of strictly arm strength.
Arm wrestling tables such as U.S. Pat. No. Des. 254,747 to O'Meara have been devised for such contests, but they do not overcome all of the aforementioned problems. Similarly, mechanical arm wrestling machines have been developed wherein contestants try to push against levers which are mechanically hooked together. Buch such mechanical machines do not solve the aforementioned problems and they move away from classic arm wrestling, which has so much more appeal to most people, both from a spectator's point of view and a participation point of view.
Accordingly, there is a need for an arm wrestling apparatus which will be safe for contestants, which can be adjusted to equalize the contest and which can readily detect cheating by one contestant or the other.